Putnam Questions, Week 3

1. If 2n + 1 and 3n + 1 are both perfect squares, prove that n is divisible by 40.

2. How many zeros does 1000! end with?

100


3. For how many k is the binomial coefficient k
odd?

4. Let n be a positive integer. Suppose that 2n and 5n begin with the same digit. What
is the digit?

5. Prove that there are no four consecutive non-zero binomial coefficients nr , r+1n



,
n

n

r+2
, r+3 in arithmetic progression.

6. Show that every positive integer is a sum of one or more numbers of the form 2r 3s ,
where r and s are nonnegative integers and no summand divides another.

7. Let n be a fixed positive integer. How many ways are there to write n as a sum of
positive integers, n = a1 + a2 + . . . + ak , with k an arbitrary positive integer, and
a1 ≤ a2 ≤ . . . ≤ ak ≤ a1 + 1? For example, with n = 4, there are four ways: 4, 2 + 2,
1 + 1 + 2, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1.

8. Let n be an even positive integer. Write the numbers 1, 2, . . . n2 in the squares of an

n × n grid so that the kth row, from write to left is

(k − 1)n + 1, (k − 1)n + 2, . . . , (k − 1)n + n.

Color the square of the grid so that half the squares in each row and in each column
are red and the other half are black (a checkerboard coloring is one possibility). Prove
that for each such coloring, the sum of the numbers on the red squares is equal to
the sum of the numbers in the black squares.

9. How many primes among the positive integers, written as usual in base 10, are such
that their digits are alternating 1s and 0s, beginning and ending with 1?

10. Show that if n is an integer greated than 1, then n does not divide 2n − 1.